Responds to an article by S. Alan Cohen on oral language deficiency and its relation to reading failure, and concludes that reading achievement and reading failure are largely determined by cognitive and communicative strategies that may be socialized differently in diverse social and ethnic groups. (JM)

Hypothesizing that severely language delayed children lack sufficient understanding of causal structure to comprehend stories, a reading program concentrated on developing the causal reasoning of 10 children between the ages of 10 and 12 with a verbal intelligence quotient two to three years below average. Instructional activities in the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 38 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of phrase-segmented, antiphrase segmented, and standard text on the free recall and probed recall of third and fourth grade developmental readers;…